


we must not be foes

by disheveledcurls



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, F/M, Friendship/Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-10
Updated: 2013-02-10
Packaged: 2017-11-28 21:38:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/679147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disheveledcurls/pseuds/disheveledcurls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Remember when we were children, and I spoke of bravery? I am still a coward. </p><p>I wish I’d been brave enough to fight for us.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	we must not be foes

**Author's Note:**

> Part of this has been rewritten so if you read it before and found it disappointing you might want to consider giving it a second chance! The setting is post-Epilogue, though you'll find spoilers related to most of DH. Hermione-centric, one-shot. See the notes below for a translation of the song lyrics quoted at the beginning (sorry, English-speakers! I did not want to use another one because "Ojalá" fits them perfectly.) Hope you enjoy this! The title comes from Shakespeare's Sonnet 40.

 

_ojalá por lo menos que me lleve la muerte_

_para no verte tanto_

_para no verte siempre_

_en todos los segundos, en todas las visiones_

[ **ojalá** , silvio rodríguez]

 

**I.**

When you ask me how I’ve been, all I can think of is the dream I have every night.

_A scent of vanilla and cinnamon floods the kitchen. The woman checks on the cake baking in the oven and wipes her hands on her apron in a slow, circular motion as she absentmindedly looks out the window, waiting for her husband. She was home early today, and in the mood for baking. This does not happen often. It has taken her years to understand the concept of 'free time.' Achieving a state of mind calm enough to actually long for something so prosaic as baking took even longer. And her hair, her light brown hair a cascade of shoulder-length curls... Many months went by before she realized she could finally get around to learning how to braid it.  
_

(I am the woman who waits in a kitchen. You are my husband. We live in a blue cottage by the sea, in the south. Nobody knows our names. It’s easier that way. No brightest witch, no boy-who-lived: only two broken, almost-mad people taking care of each other before it is too late.)

_She’s thinking it should have been different. There was a life planned in advance for her, which she ran from faster than she had run from death. The choice was simple. There's dying and torture and sacrificing everything for a cause and then there's growing old without your best friend. Some things are just intolerable. You've got to draw the line somewhere, somehow.  
_

(Remember when we were children, and I spoke of bravery? I am still a coward.

I wish I’d been brave enough to fight for us.)

_He was expecting it, of course. Making plans was unnecessary: she merely counted on their synchrony. His arms locked around her in an embrace so tight that the wonderful thought crossed her mind that he’d never let her go again. Then their fingers laced and promises were made and off they went into the unknown. Scared and unready and together, business as usual.  
_

(Why this can’t be more than a couldhavebeen, why the one thing I want from life is forbidden to me is beyond my comprehension. I don’t want to think about how this is all partly your fault.)

_She hears light footsteps behind her and instinctively gets a firm hold of the nearest object. She turns around only to find her husband standing a few feet away from her, smiling._

_“Hey." He nods towards her right hand. “You planning to spoon me to death?”_

_She looks down, finding indeed she’s holding a wooden spoon as her weapon. She laughs like a girl who's never known sorrow, and in this instant he could not tell you one reason why the world is not a happy, unharmed place, where loss is unheard of or even better, where what’s lost doesn’t hurt anymore."The Hermione effect," he calls it. She blushed the first time she heard that made-up term, and mumbled something about his determination to get in her knickers that threw him to the floor with laughter for the first time in his life -literally laughing so much his legs wouldn't support him, like in those dumb American romantic comedies Aunt Petunia was secretly so fond of.  
_

_“Shit, you found out about my evil scheme,” she says, clapping her hand to her forehead in mock frustration. “Should’ve been more careful.”_

_It’s okay now, they can joke like this because it’s over, really, really over, though it took them an eternity of paranoia and fear to feel safe, to trust the floor not to give way beneath their feet, to stop checking behind them for invisible enemies, to accept that there was a reason why his scar no longer hurt._

(I never thought giving you up would hurt so much. Sometimes I wish I’d never even met you. The second that thought crosses my mind I regret it. I cannot lose you. I will not lose you. I think the Bard –ours, not theirs- put it best: ‘...kill me with spites yet we must not be foes.’

In other words, we are bonded for life.)

_“But then again, would that have been of any use? I am Harry Potter after all,” he says, looking smug as he leans against the counter._

_She narrows her eyes, placing both hands on her hips. “I shall have my revenge, Potter. I won’t rest until I have you cornered somewhere, prisoner of my will,” she threatens him in as pompous a voice as she can muster._

_He closes the gap between them in two steps and wraps his arms around her waist. “Oh no, look what I did, just got myself right into the trap. What exactly are your intentions with me?”  
_

(I want to scream. I want to run. I want to die because I can’t have you. I want to make a scene in the middle of one of our stupid family reunions. I want to crash into you and kiss you and watch their horrified faces as you instinctively, automatically kiss me right back and wrap me in your arms so tight that you allow yourself to think you’ll never let me go again.)

_He eyes her slowly, fingertips brushing her neck as she breathes, in and out, in and out, like it's the most natural thing in the world and not something she had to re-learn after ages of gasping because you're running from imminent bloodshed and you can't stop to catch your breath. He doesn’t push her into action. After all this time and always, he's still trying to protect her. And it’s okay. She gets it, and she never did mind the quiet. But sometimes she has to nuzzle her nose against his, she has to touch him, she has to remind him of what he already knows: that she's unbreakable, that she wants this, that she's well, that she's his.  
_

('Well' and 'okay' and 'fine' have been empty of meaning in my vocabulary for years now. Did I mention I went mad for a while back there while you were off to somewhere for all those parties, getting honored for your heroism and everything? Not that you had a choice not to go. Didn't you? Not that you didn't have a wife to go home to afterwards, as I had a husband to take care of me in my madness. But I wanted it to be you. I keep wanting it to be you. Also, it's funny that I never did get an invite to most of those fancy events and I seem to recall fighting that war, too.

But maybe it's just my imagination. Like I said, I'm basically mental.)

_For a moment she loses herself staring at the little thunderbolt on his forehead, that eternal reminder. Then the electricity travelling along her skin clears her mind from all thoughts, and she surrenders to the one thing that matters, the one thing that saved him, the one thing that's saved them both. So she kisses him, because apparently he’s still indecisive, and sometimes, she thinks grinning in the middle of it, sometimes she cannot wait._

(You and I. Perfect unattainable happiness. That’s what I dream of.)

I want to confess that I am miserable, that life means nothing without you, that I wish I wasn’t married to you only in my mind but in real life. I want to say, ‘Run away with me before I dissolve into a pile of dust.’ But I don’t, of course. The family’s watching, looming in the background of this conversation, so instead of doing something stupid like telling the truth I say, ‘Fine, you know, lots of work, and you?’ thinking for the billionth time that I did not make it through the war for this.

I don’t tell you about my dream because it doesn’t matter. Because you never were, and you never will be mine.

 

**II.**

_i see you there –you are my only empire_

[ **pieces** , tired pony]

 

You find me in the backyard, later on, sitting on the vintage wooden bench by the oak tree. She had it brought here last week from some distant country. I remember her sweet voice thick with pride, the words ‘unique’ and ‘pricey’ dripping from her mouth like syrup. She talks like that ever since she married you. It makes me sick to the point of feeling like rolling my eyes and saying ‘Christ, it’s just bloody furniture,’ but of course, I don’t. We’re supposed to be friends. I’m supposed to be nice/not a coward/in love with my husband/all of the above... The list of my duties is endless. Did we not fight for the freedom to be who we are and do as we please with our lives? It's mind-boggling to me, the way we've danced ourselves into a corner where we're expected to spend the rest of our lives. I'm telling you, it's getting stuffy in here.

Such a stunningly starry night, too. I wish I could care. You sit beside me without a word.  

‘Your wife certainly has an eye for decoration.’ We are alone so there’s no one to fake for and my voice is poisonous. I cannot help it. Light from the candles she’s arranged so wonderfully all around the garden glints off your wedding band -a reminder, her retaliation. My hands clench into fists.

 _She took something of mine._ My eyes darken with utter undeniable hate. But you are already defending her.

‘’Mione…’

‘No, don’t ‘ _Mione_ me, Harry, for Christ’s sake. As if Molly’s lectures weren’t enough.’

We are silent for a moment.  ‘D'you love me?’, you ask then, in that dumbfounded i-will-never-believe-it way you have.

The question is so ridiculous and unnecessary that I have to hold back hysterical laughter. I answer loudly, in one of those so-what-if-they-hear-us, who-cares-anymore teenage outbursts we're both supposed to have outgrown, me especially.

‘Of course I do, you idiot.’

‘Then why do you keep avoiding me? There must be something we can do-’

‘Please shut up.’ Great, I’m crying already. ‘We’ve had this conversation a million times and it’s hopeless, can we please drop the subject-‘

‘What if I don’t want to?’

‘Go fuck yourself,’ I mutter rather calmly, though I’m hiding my face in my hands and still sobbing. I mentally count to three and like clockwork, you wrap an arm around me and pull me closer to your side. Then you kiss me as if it fixed things, which it doesn’t. Not that I mind.

When our eyes meet your thumb brushes my cheek clumsily and you say, ‘I love you.’ As if I didn’t know. As if it changed anything.

‘Big deal,’ I say, shrugging,

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> "Ojalá" (excerpt): i wish at least Death would take me / so i wouldn't have to see you so much / so i wouldn't have to see you always / in every second, in every vision


End file.
